My seagate freeagent can´t be found by the computer.

[Merlin]

hello well when I rolled back my chair to get out the cord for the freeagent drive was coiled to the leg somehow and fell. It fell about one to two feet from the ground onto the carpet. When i tried to open a file from there the next day I couldn't find the device on my computer. Can i never use it again or see the files I stored on this device? ):

The file should remain on the disk, the arm maybe has been damaged from the fall.
But the files should be okay.
Seems the arms on any drive do not take falls very well.
If the file is very imporatant, the you could remove the drive and install into your computer, just to see if in fact it is a hard drive issue

Merlin

 

[jamaemae]

hello I was wondering how I would be to take the drive out.

The file should remain on the disk, the arm maybe has been damaged from the fall.
But the files should be okay.
Seems the arms on any drive do not take falls very well.
If the file is very imporatant, the you could remove the drive and install into your computer, just to see if in fact it is a hard drive issue

Merlin

 

[Merlin]

hello I was wondering how I would be to take the drive out.

In this thread of posta, look at the bottom under simular posts.
The last topic

Merlin

 

[CurtisJones]

Possible temporary solution

Hi, I have the 500gb version of the FreeAgent drive and through a lot of searching, I have found that the reason most of the drives are failing is that they are overheating and burning the control board. I read on another forum that that godforsaken light in the drive is basically a heater. I kept getting the delayed write failures until I cooled the drive down and could use it again. I opened up the drive as per the instructions earlier. There are two small wires that power the light, if you unplug the connection, most of the heat isn't generated. You can also try to set the sleep timer to like 5 or so minutes so that it doesn't keep spinning. I have tried this and so far the drive has been working fine and hasn't heated up too much.

Hope this helps

 

[CurtisJones]

Not so temporary

Hello again, the fix I tried worked, until I tried to write to it from the computer it is hooked to and another computer(over a network) at the same time, then it began acting up again. To solve the heat I removed half of the top enclosure and thus far it is not heating up at all. Does anyone know what stores carry good enclosures for the Barracuda inside because I dont really want to leave it half together all the time
Thanks!

 

[Merlin]

Hello again, the fix I tried worked, until I tried to write to it from the computer it is hooked to and another computer(over a network) at the same time, then it began acting up again. To solve the heat I removed half of the top enclosure and thus far it is not heating up at all. Does anyone know what stores carry good enclosures for the Barracuda inside because I dont really want to leave it half together all the time
Thanks!

I just finally took the drive out of the freeagent and install into my computer as another drive.
I have had 3 externals, Maxtor One Touch, FreeAgent and WD MyBook, I was never satisfied with any of them.....Just no more externals for me.

Merlin

 

[Cebu Psych]

Seagate Freeagent Failure

After over a year of use my Seagate Freeagent 300+ gb drive also failed to have a drive letter assignment and couldn't be given one through Disk Management either in Vista or XP Pro.

I just about gave up on data recovery. Then I decided to look at it in Linux Ubuntu, I was able to see my drive in Ubuntu and was able to recover my data. Shortly after that the drive failed in Ubuntu too. At that point I removed the drive from the case and tried it in another interface/enclosure. No success!

Just another thing to try. . .

 

[manu_rvd]

Seagate is unreliable

Hi people,The advice posted here has been quite helpful to me..my dog tripped over the wire and the drive segate freeagent 500gb fell from about barely 1.5 ft and ever since the darn thing is making that beeping sound..i talked to the service center here(New Delhi,India) and they will readily replace it but are not that willing to recover it even if they can..my disk was about full it had all my data(all my animation scenes and files,my programming data,my college work and much much more) so replacement doesnt seem the right option i will probably lose about a year's work will now try to open it with the help of the posts provided here thank u for that..Although i did not see any posts about people going to seagate's site for help,there are two softwares provided there first one is called seatools for windows or dos which is supposed to tell if ur hard disk has failed or not but apparently that software isnt detecting my beeping free agent..secondly there is also a paid data recovery (do-it-yourself)software im currently hoping it might work although i have the trial version i downloaded from their site which doesnt detect the drive but a pirate bay full copy might get the solution i;m currently downloading it will update if it works or not there also dozens of other data recovery softwares so my suggestion to everyone would be try the software first before voiding the warranty i have a five year warranty on the piece of crap so a solution without tampering might be better..iv'e provided all the links i mentioned above n hope it helps somebody else too..I also have a transcend hard drive(can't find the model number its silver and half in size and weight than the seagate but when i goto safely remove hardware it shows a samsung HDD inside) i bought it about 3-4 years ago although it was much more expensive than this seagate drive and is only 30 gb it has been tossed around,dropped and even survived a ten foot fall while just the outer body having minor chip offs it has not once stopped working or even given a non-detection error..i fail to see how seagate has got such a good reputation for reliability the darn thing is a piece of crap,seagate is only good for making cheap internal e-sata drives u get a 500 gb internal drive for barely 50$ here but i seem to have lost faith in the seagate name..
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/troubleshooting_assistance/
http://services.seagate.com/index.aspx?lng=en-us
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4522621/Seagate_File_Recovery_v2.0

 

[Rob Williams]

manu_rvd, although it sucks to learn the hard way, you should always have more than one backup of things. If the source drive dies... you are screwed. I keep three constant backups now of all my important documents and project files... two on the PC itself (two different HDDs) and one on the NAS box. If the source drive dies, it's a lot easier to deal with if you know your data is safe.

 

[roni_9865]

tj911t......

I can take pictures of everything if it`s not to late. I have opened up my free agent without damage it.

Ante.

Hi Ante,
i too want to take apart my disk(freeagent segsatee),if possible please send me images of how u have taken apart it....
Thanks...waiting 4 ur reply

 

[Bee]

Help me folks, I have a FreeAgent 1TB Desktop problem... it is not recognised by any computer.

Anybody know if this is a mechanical failure, a problem with the USB interface board or the HD controller board, etc?

Here are the symptoms:

- Powers on
- Light activates when plugged in via USB to laptop
- Light stays solid for about 30 seconds
- After 30s, the light alternates between solid orange and soft orange
- When USB plug is removed from the laptop, the light continues as when plugged in

Thanks!

 

[Bee]

Alright, I managed to get the separate the HDD from the enclosure/interface card. I don't have a computer that supports SATA to plug the HDD into - the only desktop I have uses IDE.

So I ordered an Antec MX-1 Enclosure.

Given the symptoms, I'm confident that the HDD is not broken - hence the reason for the purchase of the enclosure. Also consider the fact that I really don't want to lose the data on the drive, so the assumption that it still works is wishful thinking!

Will report back. What should I do with this enclosure? I might put it back together and have an empty Seagate FreeAgent Enclosure just for laughs.

 

[vim]

Same story here.

Been using a 1TB Free Agent Pro for a few months. Jam packed with photos, documents and other stuff.
This morning when I turned on my computer the light started "pulsing" and the faint beep could be heard. No recognition of the drive. Looked around and of course no mention of this problem on Seagates home page. Then I started finding hundreds of people like you with the same problem.

 

[Recipe7]

nibbler, vim, bee:

We all have the same problem. Mine more in line with nibbler's though.

Anyone find any solutions to this problem yet? Mine simply dropped about a foot and a half to a carpeted floor, and now the computer won't recognize it: any computer for that matter.

it has that bee buzz sound every 10 seconds, and all motion/spinning inside the HD stops after 3 minutes.

Anyone care to chime in? I know this thread is super dead... hope someone is knowledgeable with our situation.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

nibbler, vim, bee:

We all have the same problem. Mine more in line with nibbler's though.

Anyone find any solutions to this problem yet? Mine simply dropped about a foot and a half to a carpeted floor, and now the computer won't recognize it: any computer for that matter.

it has that bee buzz sound every 10 seconds, and all motion/spinning inside the HD stops after 3 minutes.

Anyone care to chime in? I know this thread is super dead... hope someone is knowledgeable with our situation.

Hard disks do not like being treated roughly. These are delicate mechanical devices that rely on highly precise alignments to work properly. Dropping or thumping the drive can (and often does) knock the heads out of alignment making the drive unable to read itself. Sometimes the read/write head slams into the platter damaging it's surface, making data recovery almost impossible.

USB drives that work for a time then aren't recognized happen for a couple of reasons...

1) Bad USB cables... these are not robust cables, the wires inside break very easily. You should always have a spare cable on hand.

2) Bad USB interfaces... the SATA to USB interface chip may be damaged by any number of means, including rough handling. In this case you should be able to recover your data by installing the drive in a new sleeve or directly in a computer.

3) Drive failures... As pointed out above all kinds of things can go wrong with a Hard Disk. If this is the case your data may be perminently lost.


There are companies specializing in data recovery from damaged drives, they charge typically $1,000 and up and, depending on the commercial value of the data, that can be quite a bargain.

There is also software you can download to try to get at least part of your data back from damaged drives... One of the better ones is HERE

Your best insurance is to always have multiple copies of the stuff you don't want to lose... My personal stuff is stored on my machines, on a backup drive and archived on DVDs... just to prevent the very situation you guys find yourselves in.

 

[Recipe7]

Im getting a sata to usb connector soon, I will chime back in this thread and give details as to what happened. i hope it will help those who meet this thread. i've been optimistic only because there is no crazy mechanical sounds coming from the unit, and it still powers up and spins like it use to. i'm just hoping its a mechanical thing, =o

 

[chinmul]

How to open enclosure without breaking clips

Dear Ante, Nick1696 ,

Saw your pictures of the disassembled enclosure.

These pics make it very clear that the drive casing was not made to be opened.

How did you manage to open the casing without damaging the casing or the internal clips ?

Thanks,

 

[rexlamhk]

Hi guys,

Sadly my FreeAgent 500G suddenly stopped working when copying data to another hard drive. It Just stopped all of a sudden and the light went out and it never start again, not even the orange light. I can hear small "clicks" when I plug it to my computer, it sounds like it's trying to start but failed to move.

I wanna ask if you guys' FreeAgent are having this "lights out" problem or if it "looks like normal, but pc cannot read from it"?

Thanks!

 

[janettwokay]

Rexlamhk, your best bet is to surf the 'net to find out what others have done in your situation. There is a wealth of info out there that is continuously being updated. Good luck.

 

[seagate=fail]

hello all. just wanted to throw 2 pennies in. my drive did this exact same thing when i was trying to retrieve some music. fortunately i only have 15 gigs of 320 used all replaceable. after reading this thread i got inspired to take it apart, completely. i figured free agent would do it for me so they wouldnt have to honor the warranty, why not? some of the grounding contacts on the circuit board were mildly corroded, but not enough to hurt anything. i managed to dig the hard drive out, which was quite sturdy, made of machined aluminum) and pulled the 8? i (i think) torx screws from the hd cover revealing THE problem. the motor/ drive spindle thingy (whatever its called) is completely seized! i can almost guarantee THIS is the problem. data may be retrievable from the disks if you remove them carefully and dont scratch them. if you have an old junk 2 layer drive laying around they will fit in, it would be worth a try. i'm a tinkerer, not a computer guru, so maybe one of them can chime in on that subject. all the stories i've read on these things, and their shaudy customer service, have moved me to join this forum just to share my findings with you. if you feel like returning your drives i say go for it. but you've lost all that hard work, unless you pay for it? :b.s. flag: they should be held responsible for their crap product. so... lesson learned. i'm out 85 bucks and 15 gig worth of music. but i did get some nice new neodymium refrigerator magnets out of the deal.

have a happy seagate free new year
-p-